In an establishment with an open environment, such as a retail store or a conference room, there can be one or more electronic displays for displaying information to patrons, customers, guests, or other visitors. Such monitors can be mounted in locations that are readily visible, such as above entrances or aisles, near store shelves or product displays, on walls, or in other suitable locations. The displays can be included in embedded devices that are used for a variety of purposes, such as digital signage, advertising, and providing various other forms of information that may be of interest to the visitors. However, if the current content is not synchronized between devices in the environment, the displays may only be able to show outdated information to the visitors.
In certain environments, digital signage including images, web content, advertisements, and other electronic content, can be displayed on multiple screens that are physically close to each other. These screens can be in embedded devices that access common content. The screens can share the synchronized content, but not necessarily show the same portion of the content. The content can be pulled or pushed from a system or server, which is typically remote and not located in close proximity to the embedded devices and their screens. To achieve high levels of portability, screens of these embedded devices may be dedicated to displaying web content obtained from a remote web server or content repository. In traditional environments with embedded devices, the devices must each separately connect to a remote system (e.g., a server or a repository) in order to obtain content to be displayed. However, synchronizing content between the devices can require simultaneous access to and communication with the remote system. Additionally, synchronizing content between each of the devices within a given environment and the remote system can require relatively large amounts of communication between each of the devices and the remote system.
It is desirable to efficiently achieve real time and near-real time synchronization of content between devices without each of the devices having to access a remote system.